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Thursday, October 31, 2013

UK NHS £11B health-care computer system fails

If you want to simplify health care by going to a single payer - the government - then learn from the UK. The NHS - National Health System - is their health care for everyone, except for private care purchased by wealthier people. It must be nice to have everything run by one outfit = no difficult decisions for everyone. How is it working?

NHS decided to have one computer system for everyone. Ending having some records here and some there. They undertook an £11 billion development effort, which is about $20 billion. After ten years they gave up. They failed.

A plan to create the world's largest single civilian computer system linking all parts of the National Health Service is to be abandoned by the Government after running up billions of pounds in bills. Ministers are expected to announce next month that they are scrapping a central part of the much-delayed and hugely controversial 10-year National Programme for IT.

Instead, local health trusts and hospitals will be allowed to develop or buy individual computer systems to suit their needs – with a much smaller central server capable of "interrogating" them to provide centralised information on patient care. News of the Government's plans comes as a damning report from a cross-party committee of MPs concludes that the £11.4bn programme had proved "beyond the capacity of the Department of Health to deliver".

The Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said that, while the intention of creating a centralised database of electronic patient records was a "worthwhile aim", a huge amount of money had been wasted. ...